‘Sacred’ and ‘secret’ come from the verb ‘to segregate’. Originally, a book was called sacred when it held secrets. When people called that part of the temple that only the high priest could enter ‘sacred’, because it was ‘segregated’ from the rest, they associated ‘sacred’ with ‘secret’.

‘Religion’, which comes from the Latin verb ‘legere’, which first meant to unite and later to read, originally referred to reading a sacred book many times – to re read it – in order to discover its secrets.

A BOOK OF WISDOM

The Bible holds a collection of well thought out stories that invite us to ask questions whose answers lead to new questions, thus creating a dynamic that eventually enables us to obtain a better comprehension of ourselves and the world we live in.

Wisdom has nothing to do with knowing lots of things, but with processing information right; with investigating how new ideas affect all previous ideas.

SECRET 1: HARMONY

Evolution continually makes everything more sophisticated – today we have arms of mass destruction – and enables an always smaller percentage of the world population to appropriate an always larger percentage of the resources, which increases the tension between the different groups of people and between people and the environment. Therefore, a society that doesn’t live in harmony is bound to destroy itself.

Harmony – not doing to others what is hateful to ourselves and doing to others what we would like them to do to us – is not Utopia, but the only way to avoid mankind’s imminent self-destruction.

Whereas the authorities – scientific or religious – ignore this threat, the Bible recognizes this reality: ten generations after putting an end to harmony (paradise), for eating a forbidden fruit, a terrible catastrophe (the great flood) puts an end to civilization leaving only a few survivors. Asking why we have conflicts with each other and with the environment is the same as asking what the forbidden fruit refers to. Since this ‘sacred’ book says that Adam and Eve were vegetarians in the days of paradise, it encourages us to investigate whether a change in mankind’s diet put an end to harmony.

Living in harmony requires a good understanding of reality and therefore a good perception of reality. Only when we learn everything there is to learn from our experiences can we avoid making the same mistakes. Drugs alter our perception of reality. They make us focus so much on certain aspects that we ignore others; they make us concentrate on short term benefits while we ignore long term drawbacks. Since the forbidden fruit is a metaphor for drug – the fruits of the Arbutus Unedo hold alcohol – the Bible suggests that they started off a chain reaction that continually took mankind further away from harmony.

SECRET 2: THE OLD AGES

The Bible tells us when the first 20 patriarchs – 10 from Adam to Noah and 10 from Shem to Abraham – had their heir and when they died. One enigma is that Adam lived another 800 years after he ate the forbidden fruit, although God had said that he would die if he did so; another that right before the great flood God said, “My spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal, let his days be a 120 years” and that afterwards the patriarchs continued to reach higher ages.

The ages of the first seven patriarchs (from Adam to Enoch) add up to 7 times 7 times 120 minus 1; the ages of the next thirteen patriarchs (from Methuselah to Abraham) add up to 7 times 7 times 120 minus 13; the years between Enoch’s death and Abrahams birth total 8 times 120 minus 1; the maximum amount of years a patriarch reached after having his heir are 7 times 120 (Kenan); and the ages that the first 10 patriarchs had their heirs total 13 times 120 minus 4.

Although the ages of the first seven patriarchs add up to only 5,879, the age of Enoch was 365, a figure that refers to the number of days in a year, and with the additional day of a leap year we do reach 5,880.

Since the first seven patriarchs reached the age of 7 times 7 times 120 years together, the Bible suggests that someone’s age depends on the ages his descendants reach, and that by killing the firstborn sons the patriarchs prolonged their lives.

SECRET 3: THE GENEALOGIES (OT)

The Bible says that God created Adam in His image, and that before the great flood the sons of God had children with the daughters of ‘man’. Therefore, it does not consider Adam and Eve as the first people on earth, but only as the generation that put an end to harmony. God prescribed a vegetarian diet to Adam: “I give you every seed-bearing plant and every tree that has fruit with seed in it.” When God allowed Noah and his descendants to eat animals, He no longer regarded them as creatures made in His image, but as animals. The second dietary law – “everything that lives and moves will be food for you, just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything” – refers to the one given to Adam and when we read that passage again we find that God gave the green plants to the animals.

Since God asked Noah to take one pair of each of the impure species and seven pairs of each of the pure species with him on the Ark, the four couples of humans on the Ark indicate that God regarded them between pure and impure. Since these animals later had to repopulate the earth, impure refers to incest. For pure species, the best way to avoid endogamy is that, with each new generation, each of the seven male (or female) lineages successively crosses itself with the seven female (or male) lineages, so that eight generations later it is again the turn of the same female (or male) lineage. The Bible says that Enoch walked with God because eight generations separate him from God (the generation before Adam).

The Bible thus considers that endogamy is another consequence of eating the forbidden fruit. When we read about the family ties between the different protagonists in the Bible, we find that Abraham married his sister (same father but different mother); that his brother Nahor married Milcah, the daughter of his other brother Haran; that his grandson Jacob married two sisters; that Lot, the son of Haran, had children from his two daughters; that Judah, a son of Jacob (great grandson of Abraham) had a son from his daughter-in-law, etc.

When we process the information about the family ties, we find more cases of incest and endogamy. For instance, Rebekah’s mother was Milcah, while her father was Bethuel, Milcah’s son. That both Lot and Milcah had an incestuous relation encourages us to investigate their parents, and discover that Haran had Lot and Milcah from a wife of his father Terah (but not Haran’s mother). This explains why the Bible omits who Haran was married to and suggests that an incestuous relation without a blood relation – incest refers to a relation between people who are not allowed to marry – leads one generation later to an incestuous relation with a blood relation.

SECRET 4: THE GENEALOGIES (NT)

The Bible recognizes the fact that because of extramarital relations lineages are either real (based on the ‘father begat son’ principle) or supposed (based on formulas such as ‘Cain knew his wife and she became pregnant’ or ‘to Enoch was born Irad’). Saint Matthew and Saint Luke offer different genealogies for Jesus because the former is based on the ‘father begat son’ principle while the latter uses the formula ‘Jesus was believed to be the son of’. This is why, for instance, Saint Matthew says Joseph’s father was Jacob, while Saint Luke says it was Heli.

Saint Luke offers an additional generation between Adam and Noah. That Genesis says that Arpachshad begat Shelah, while Saint Luke points out that people believed that Shelah was the son of Cainan, and Cainan the son of Arpachshad, means that Arpachshad first had Cainan, and later had Shelah from his daughter-in-law, Cainan’s wife. Therefore, Judah and Tamar’s relation was not the first one among Jesus’ ancestors between a father-in-law and daughter-in-law.

The genealogy in Saint Matthew, which mentions 4 adulterous women (and one of them is Tamar), ends with, “Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, of her was born Jesus who is called Christ. The sum of generations is therefore: 14 from Abraham to David; 14 from David to the Babylonian deportation; and 14 from the Babylonian deportation to Christ.”

Since we have to include both the first and the last generation when we count the 14 that go from Abraham to David, we have to do so as well when we count the generations from David to the deportation to Babylon, and from the deportation to Babylon to Jesus Christ. This gives us the division: Abraham/David, David/Josiah, and Josiah/Joseph. Since there are 14 generations from Josiah to Joseph, and Saint Matthew says there are 14 generations between Josiah, who marks the Deportation to Babylon, and Jesus, Joseph and Jesus form part of the same generation, which means that Jacob had Jesus from Joseph’s wife, his daughter-in-law.

There are also 14 generations from Enoch to Abraham, which implies that first every 7 and later every 13 generations Jesus’ male lineage, after crossing again the same female lineage, attracted a special spirit: Enoch, Abraham, David, Josiah and Jesus were all special. The 14 Stations of the Cross suggest that Jesus’ Second Coming – the Messiah – will be a descendant of that special male lineage separated from Jesus several times 14 generations.

THE MESSIAH

When someone discovers something that his contemporaries cannot comprehend, he will look for a way to pass this idea on to that future generation that will manage to understand it. This is what the Bible is about and why it holds secrets.

When Abraham came to the conclusion that a society that doesn’t live in harmony is bound to destroy itself, and realized that only that generation that found itself on the verge of self-destruction would understand the ultimate cause and consequence of not living in harmony, he created a mystery for the future generations: the Bible.

Jesus, a reincarnation of Abraham, reached the same conclusion regarding mankind’s evolution after discovering the secrets in the Bible. Since mankind had not yet reached that critical point in their evolution, he continued to prepare society for that moment.

Jesus found out that most people only accept an idea when authorities do so, and that authorities ignore a discovery they don’t understand, as it demonstrates they process information as badly as all other people. He also realized that people pay more attention to miracles and prophecies than to philosophical ideas.

Since the Bible had become an independent authority, Jesus added an enigma to it. While by revealing this enigma, his Second Coming will demonstrate to be a reincarnation of Jesus, by revealing the nature of the forbidden fruit, he will demonstrate to be the Messiah.

VIDEOS

ADAM AND EVE WERE VEGETARIANS (COMPLEX COMPREHENSION)

ABOUT US

This website and also the philosophical messages on the Camino de Santiago (the Wall of Wisdom at km 33, Travel Broadens the Mind at km 35 and Food for Thought at km 44), are the work of Bruno Lernout

If you want to know more about his work, please read “14 REVELATIONS”

This book will be published in 2019.

If you want to know more about him, please read “40 YEARS IN SPAIN”

This autobiography – the experiences of a guide on the Camino de Santiago, on the Silk Road and in life in general – is a real ‘full monty’ and will be published only when he, his siblings and his neighbours are ready for it.